Faiza Ahmed Khan’s documentary Supermen of Malegaon continues to move audiences nearly two decades after its release. Ahead of its screening at the NCPA, excerpts from a conversation with the filmmaker.
By Aishwarya Bodke
It is Friday. The sound of the azaan melts into the mechanical churn of the mills in Malegaon. The power looms hum without pause, an ever-present soundscape of the town. But on Fridays, they stop. Hundreds of workers religiously turn up at the local cinema hall after the Jumma prayers. They rush and jostle for tickets as the doors are thrown open.
The opening shot of Faiza Ahmed Khan’s 2008 documentary Supermen of Malegaon, in less than a minute, captures the multitudes of Malegaon.
Khan’s film—she is also known for her 2016 documentary Cost of Coal, which followed the lives of Adivasi communities affected by the expansion of the Kusmunda coal mine in Chhattisgarh—leaps into the obsession of Malegaon with movies. Fraught with communal tension, the textile town in Maharashtra is divided into ghettos by the Mosam river, with a predominantly Hindu population on one side and a Muslim majority on the other. “Lekin filmy shaukeen dono qaum hain,” exclaims a resident in the documentary.
Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Bruce Lee find their way to the heart of Malegaon. Nasir Shaikh, a wedding videographer, and his group of friends are amateur filmmakers. They give rise to a cottage industry of shoestring parodies of Bollywood classics, the first of which was Malegaon Ke Sholay. The phenomenon, which lasted for over a decade, wound down with the ambitious Malegaon Ka Superman, documented in detail in Khan’s film. These spoofs were localised, anchored in the yearnings and worries of the population. Here, Superman is troubled with asthma due to the impact of the looms on air quality. He flies to the top of a tower to get cell reception. The villain thrives on the filth that plagues the streets.
Screened at over 30 international film festivals, Khan’s documentary has bagged several accolades, including the Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2008 Asiatica Film Mediale in Rome. In 2012, it had a theatrical and a subsequent DVD release, rare for documentaries. All these years later, Supermen of Malegaon still finds new audiences across the world while also having inspired Bollywood filmmaker Reema Kagti’s recent feature Superboys of Malegaon.
They say no art is entirely original. It is amusing, though, how the very industry that prompted these parodies now turns to Malegaon for inspiration. But the pulse of Khan’s film rests with its people and their imperfect city, a few hundred miles from the home of Bollywood. One of the filmmakers interviewed in the documentary sums it up poignantly: “I have been trying to cover the 300-kilometre distance to Mumbai for the past 15 years, but Mumbai never seems to come any closer.”
Cinema Collective is bringing Supermen of Malegaon to the NCPA this month as part of Reality Check, for films about films are meant to be watched on the big screen. Excerpts from a conversation with the filmmaker:
ON Stage: You show a movement of parody filmmaking that took shape in a small town, through a working-class Muslim community distraught by poverty and communal violence. What were some of the challenges you faced?
Faiza Khan: The infamous 2008 Malegaon blasts, fresh in public memory then, were a point of curiosity for me. The river running through the city, dividing the Hindus and the Muslims, and the history of power looms often owned by the Hindus and run by Muslim labour, all led me to the city. A long history of weavers moving to the town from parts of Uttar Pradesh due to poor living conditions and communal violence was also a factor. Gradually, hand weaving stopped, and power looms took over. I was keen on exploring all of it. When we got there, the people of Malegaon reminded us that there is more to the town, while being mindful of not putting out a flattened image of its very complex identity.
Apart from navigating these complexities, logistical challenges in filming are always present. Almost all of the filmmakers and actors shown in the documentary had day jobs. They could not take days off as they would miss their daily wage. We were always in the middle of juggling schedules and that, too, finds its way in the film.
OS: Nearly two decades on, the lives of the people in the film have changed. Two of them are no longer with us. With widespread reach of the internet, has Malegaon moved past the phenomenon you captured?
FK: It definitely felt like we were capturing a moment in the history of Malegaon’s film industry. It had a sense of passing; Nasir’s Malegaon ka Superman was the last film they made in that format. In due course, YouTube became popular, and people started making short-form content. Some of the people in Malegaon were able to adapt to that, some not so much. Akram Khan, who plays the villain in Malegaon ka Superman, now has a very popular YouTube channel with millions of viewers.
I think our time there also coincided with the tail end of the video hall era [when films were shown, often on VCDs and DVDs, in small theatres] and a crackdown on piracy. Then mobile phones became ubiquitous and people shifted to watching things on palm-sized screens. Film-watching as a collective phenomenon was coming to an end.
OS: What was your relationship like with the ‘Supermen’ after the cameras stopped rolling?
FK: The cameras, in that sense, never stopped rolling because we were trying to get a sense of the world that these films inhabit in the lives of the people who make them. We would go to meet them, and the cameras, microphones and tripods always accompanied us. Everyone was supportive and made time and space for us in their homes and their lives, but they assumed we would leave in a few days. We showed up at Nasir’s home one morning and he looked puzzled and exasperated. But as a filmmaker, he eventually understood our process.
They are all inherently performers and quite comfortable in front of the camera, so they instinctively knew what to do. But in the end, I think it was a performance. The presence of the camera inevitably changes the situation. I initially imagined being a fly on the wall, but I came to realise that it was not really possible. Your presence is an active factor
OS: How did your presence shape the space around the camera? Perhaps the only time you stepped into the conversation (and retained it in the film) is when discussing women’s role in the public and cinema life of Malegaon. Have any superwomen emerged in the 17 years since?
FK: One of the first things that struck me about Malegaon was the glaring absence of women, not only in the making of films but also in the consumption of films. Video halls were completely male-dominated spaces. Cell phones were not as common and women could only watch films at home on VCDs. I felt strongly about this gap. It seemed to me that someone like Nasir, who was breaking ground in so many ways, held conflicting views on the matter. I brought that up with him and the conversation did not go down too well. He was quite upset and we did not shoot for the next two days. In retrospect, there were not that many women on sets within the Bombay film industry either. Surely things have changed, but back in 2007, I was working on another film and I was the only woman in the crew at some point. However, I am not sure if any women filmmakers have emerged in Malegaon since.
OS: Supermen of Malegaon has had an unusually long life for a documentary. Why do you think it keeps resurfacing?
FK: It is a story that resonates with a lot of people, working across time and geographies: a classic underdog tale of protagonists doing amazing things with very little resources. The people in the film are very compelling. That is the fundamental reason it still resonates.
In addition to that, I think piracy is what helped the film stay in public memory. Ever since its theatrical and DVD release, multiple copies have been circulated. Independent film clubs have been screening it continually around the country. Not a month has gone by without a screening or someone watching it somewhere and writing in. That is because it is so freely available. I have learned that if you hold on too tight, then it just disappears from collective cultural memory. So, I had no control over it and it went everywhere with this unfettered distribution of piracy networks. It is incredible to see the kind of places where it continues to surface.
OS: In recent years, Indian documentaries have been having a wonderful run on the global front. What are your thoughts on the future of documentary filmmaking, especially in a regional context?
FK: While it is great that more documentaries are being seen and are travelling to international platforms, I think their future in India remains quite dismal. A very small number of films make it there, often with little to no support. The kind of infrastructure needed to support documentary filmmaking has never really been in place, and the distribution has largely been sustained by independent groups. Public funding machinery within bodies like the Public Service Broadcasting Trust and the National Film Development Corporation of India is almost non-existent now. Instead of strengthening these efforts, the government has, over the years, dismantled several existing structures. Many of the films picked up by global platforms are expected to be character-driven with a narrative arc and a three-act structure [of a beginning, middle and end]. I feel this straightjackets the form.
This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of ON Stage.
